“He rushes to a front of a bed,” pronounced linebacker Eric Striker, who was among those unresolved out with Mayfield during some down time heading adult to a Orange Bowl. “We were like, ‘Bake, what’s going on?’ He’s like, ‘The game’s about to start!’ Bake is genuine intense.”

Mayfield is frequency alone in his adore for video games.

Many college athletes spend their gangling time with video games, personification all from Halo — a science-fiction diversion elite by Mayfield — to a always renouned Madden NFL.

On a surface, it is only today’s chronicle of athletes sitting around personification cards, an apparent passage for fastening with teammates and gratifying that rival expostulate divided from a field.

But for some, it is some-more than only fun and games.

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Clemson regulating behind Wayne Gallman, whose group degraded a Sooners, 37-17, in a Orange Bowl inhabitant semifinal Thursday, is assured that video games has helped urge his opening on a field.

“When I’m personification Madden, we can see where a shell is entrance from if I’m regulating a ball,” he said. “I can see where a hole is going to be given we have a bigger perspective of a field.”

Another of Clemson’s zealous gamers, defensive tackle Carlos Watkins, pronounced video games helped him file skills that can be useful on a field. In particular, he forked to a hand-eye coordination indispensable to scheme a controller while looking during a video screen, that is not wholly opposite from regulating his hands to kick a blocker while gripping an eye on a male with a ball.

“You only get so practiced to it, it’s crazy,” he said.

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Long noticed as zero some-more than a foolish pursuit, video games have turn increasingly formidable and realistic — so most so that there are indeed colleges charity scholarships to play a games, a de facto joining famous as Major League Gaming and a flourishing series of networks peaceful to publish competitions like League of Legends.

It has even led to discuss over either gamers should be deliberate athletes, no opposite from those who play some-more normal sports such as football and basketball.

Mayfield, who has pondered a idea of personification video games professionally, is not prepared to go that far.

“It’s some-more of a saved hobby,” he said. “I wouldn’t call it a sport. we wouldn’t contend a guys on there are athletes. But they’re good during what they do. Obviously, they’re really talented.”

Mayfield is flattering talented, too. He has left so distant as to contend he does not consider anyone on a Oklahoma campus can kick him in Halo.

Alabama receiver ArDarius Stewart is vacant during how distant video games have come only given he was a child.

“It’s only humorous looking during it now, like, Aw, man, this is real,” Stewart said. “Now we see it. Now I’m putting it together.”

Then again, there are limitations.

Mayfield plays down any crossover from a video shade to a genuine game. But he concurred that a complexities of Halo can raise a decision-making skills indispensable when he is dissecting defenses, job an heard and creation certain all his teammates are lined adult in a right spots.

“It’s a good multitasking hobby,” he said. “You’re meditative about one thing and doing another.”

Gallman is already looking brazen to a subsequent era of games.

“Soon, we’ll only play video games with a bodies,” he said. “I adore it.”

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